Homeostasis
by mirajens
Summary: No heart left to beat but you still make my chest clench.


**homeostasis**

 **.**

 **.**

If his heart beat at all, it would be for this. The chase: the war drums of a nervous human pulse egging him on, the feel of the ground under his feet slick with the first spills of blood, the scent permeating the air heavy with promise and fear. He feels the thrill that a couple of centuries have not yet been chased out of his system.

Natsu backs his victim into ruins of an old church (ha!) and its easy to sink a row of teeth where the man's pulse beat strongest. The substance of life rolls on Natsu's tongue and down his throat (for a moment he remembers what its like to be alive) and he laughs as he feeds, even as the man convulses under him like a lover in climax. In death.

He doesn't know he's being hunted, but he's old enough that he senses _her_ and in no time, his blood-soaked hand has her neck in a clutch as his eyes bore into hers, not quite red like his, but close enough. "Did you come to die, girl?"

Lucy Heartfilia doesn't flinch when claws dig just the slightest into her windpipe. She meets his gaze and thinks what she always does when she sees his eyes: _you could have killed me before but something always stops you._ Then: _What is it that stops you?_ What had it been that made him decide on that very first night she foolishly tried to engage him in battle and instead of draining the blood right out of her veins, he turned her into this halfling not quite alive, not quite dead. "I came to kill, as always." The gun in her hand is easy enough to push under his jaw where his skin is soft and the blessed ebony bullets can hurt like a bitch.

For a moment, lightning fast, Natsu's gaze flickers off her face to watch the wind pick up the tail of her ponytail. The pretty blonde of her hair catches in the moonlight, threads of sunbeams that his kind detest. Natsu is a creature of the night but every time Lucy comes for him, the gold-spun locks give him visions of everything he loved before death all under the glow of the sun.

He thinks, this is probably why he can never kill her. There had been many opportunities like this, with all odds against her and his bloodthirst singing. But he always finds an excuse to leave her just half-dead but still alive to share her sunlight with him another day. "You came you _fail_. Again." Laughter barks out of him, dry and hollow.

"Again because even though I fail, you can't finish me off? One little girl?" She winks at him, saucy even as his hands tighten around her neck and the blood from his forearms drip down the front of her shirt.

He snarls and pulls her forward just to slam her back against the pillar of the church behind her. The lovely sound of her skull hitting marble makes him purr. His free hand swats at the gun in her hand so it clatters feet away under some pews. "You're entertaining. Like a stupid jester come to brighten the dregs of immortality." How long have they been playing this game? Decades? A century? "Maybe I'm just playing with my food."

"Or maybe you're too pussy to actually kill me." Lucy cocks her head to the side, painful because of his grip. "What's wrong, Natsu? Don't tell me you're still in love with me."

 _A flash of man and woman chasing each other on the beach,_

 _Pink hair tangling with blonde as they bow their heads together in bed,_

" _I'll always love you, Luce,"_

 _The taste of her lips against his: overripe peach that makes him drunk,_

 _Lucy weeping by his sickbed,_

 _Her screaming as she watches the changed him slaughter her family a fortnight after he dies,_

 _The vow she makes to kill him again and keep him dead,_

The twist of Natsu's lips look too cruel to be called a smile. "My heart stopped beating long ago, I'm afraid."

To prove it, he sinks his teeth into her neck and tears muscle and artery so blood can rain. He drinks it eagerly and he doesn't stop until he heart stops beating, too. When he walks away, he tells himself he finally killed her because he was tired of her persistence.

Definitely not because she kept making him want that life with her he couldn't have any more.

–

 **note:** Ahh yes. Don't tell me you didn't love that clichéd ending.

This was just a quick little thing inspired very very vaguely by a romance pocket book cover that is as cheesy as it is raunchy, as pocket book covers are bound to be. I can't even remember the title, but the vampire had the lady in that choking position thingy against a marble pillar.


End file.
